Garrison and Adrienne (Sunday morning)

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Garrison and Adrienne have a lazy Sunday morning together in Garrison's suite and discuss movies, Tandy, and some upcoming vacations.

"You know, aren't we supposed to send the kid out of the house to make out? You just coming down to my place seems like cheating somehow." Garrison looked up from his latest Sports Illustrated, as they lazed around his room. It was a little surprising how quickly their relationship had found its former intimacy, which had shown itself in both passionate sex, but also casual company, comfortable in their own skin to relax together. She was lying on her stomach beside him on the bed, flipping through the mansion's huge cable package.

"Maybe it just seems like cheating to you because your parents were divorced?" Adrienne suggested as she stopped channel-surfing on an old Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn movie. "So you never had to contend with the mental trauma of your parents making out in the next room while you lived at home?"

"True. Although, I wonder if Tandy now has a definition for your 'out of suite' time?" He stretched and idly poked her in the ribs with his big toe. "I mean, I know you're not a single mother or anything, eh. But you've got to imagine that she's at least mentally making fun of us."

"I've been telling her we're barbecuing," Adrienne joked, swatting at his foot in response to the poking. "I would clearly be the worst single mother ever. I'd be like Kate Hepburn in this movie," she commented, pointing at the screen. The movie had just started, but she'd seen it before. "If my kid were like her leopard, I'd leave my kid in the car so that she jumps into another car and I drive the wrong car. And if she got replaced by a circus... kid, I wouldn't be able to tell."

"I know we've had this discussion before, but not all of life's experiences can be summed up via a Hepburn metaphor." He joked. "Also, you need to stop confusing the kids. Half of them keep calling the old guy in Up 'Spencer' because of you."

"I'm going to make it my life's work to prove you wrong there," Adrienne vowed with a vehement nod. "Hey! That's not my fault!" she protested, flicking his arm with her thumb and forefinger. "I haven't even seen that movie! It's not my fault I put a lot of Tracy/Hepburn movies on and they absorb them! Classic movies are good for them... when they aren't all misogynistic and shit." She rolled off the bed, in need of some food, and padded naked into the kitchenette. "Speaking of classic movies," she called out, throwing some bread in the toaster, "I got Tandy a couple passes to the Turner Classic Film Festival in Hollywood for her birthday for her and a couple classmates, but I don't trust her, after everything that's happened, to go without adult supervision, so I was gonna go too. You wanna come with me? It's the end of April. I think Jean and Scott are in, too," she explained.

"Hmm... Turner Classic Film Festival? I didn't know that Tandy was into old movies. Or is this you projecting, babe?" He said, looking up again from his magazine to enjoy her walking naked past the bed. "What's on? Because I remember being taken to an Ingmar Bergman festival once by a very serious counterculture artiste young woman in college, and had to fake a heart attack to escape the slow, black and white slide into self-harm."

"The theme is 'Cinematic Journeys', so it'll be lots of movies that have travel in them. I think there are a couple Bergman films on the docket, but also things like The Exorcist, Mildred Pierce, On The Waterfront, and Airplane." Adrienne flipped him off in response to his quip about her projecting. "She is very much into old movies! She posts about movies fairly regularly," she pointed out. "She really likes the old horror flicks, like I do. Hey, maybe that's why her uncle picked me to help with the guardianship thing," she smirked, brewing coffee as she waited for the toast. "Did you really fake a heart attack?" she questioned, disbelief on her face.

"To be fair, it wasn't a very good fake. A lot less Marlon Brando and a lot more Red Foxx." He settled back, enjoying the smell of coffee that was filling the room. "It's been a long time since I've seen the Exorcist." Kane reached for his phone and quickly found the film list for the event.

"The Great Escape and Gimmie Shelter... I could be persuaded to attend with those."

Adrienne cut up a couple kiwis, strawberries, and bananas while waiting for the coffee and toast, making a fruit salad which she threw in a couple bowls with some grapes and tangerine wedges. She plated and buttered the toast when it popped out of the toaster and took the plates and bowls over to the bed while waiting for the coffee to finish perking. "I wanna see the fake heart attack. Do it or no food for you," she informed him with a smirk.

Kane clutched at his chest. "I'm coming, Lizabeth! I'm coming!"

"What the hell was that?" Adrienne asked with a snort, giggling. "No wonder she didn't believe you! And who's Lizabeth?" But she gave him the food anyway, mostly because she wanted to put it down so she could go back and get the coffee.

"You're older than me. I shouldn't have to explain 70s references to you. Isn't that when you were finishing high school?"

Gasping, Adrienne poured one cup of coffee, for herself, and returned to the bed. "No coffee for you after that remark. No one talks about a Frost's age and gets coffee. I'm not even that much older than you! Besides," she muttered indignantly, "I didn't really go to high school."

"That's right. You were already modeling. Well, obviously you missed all the high quality reruns we got during our summer vacations. Maybe you watched 'Three's Company' in Italian or something." He popped some fruit into his mouth. "That's really the root of your problems, Frost. You never learned the important lessons about life from television like the rest of us did. For example, how to handle two girls when you've actually accidentally arranged for a date with both of them at the same time. Vital skills for the future."

"Hmm, maybe this is why I've never arranged dates with people," Adrienne mused, chewing on her toast. "Hey, did you still want to go down to Florida for Spring Training during Spring Break this year?" she asked him.

"We might have to just do a weekend, but I've got time. Although, this time, no boats."

"Ooo!" Adrienne clapped her hands together. "Yeah, of course, no more boats, maybe ever," she smirked. "But no, this is actually kind of perfect. See, I was a little worried about going away again, so soon after our little boat escapade, and leaving Tandy here during the school's spring break," she explained, making a face, "so I was going to ask you if she could come with us, except I've been putting it off... I guess because part of me didn't want to bring a teenager along on what's always been our thing." She gestured between the two of them. "But if you can only get away for a weekend, why don't I take her down for the week and you can join us later? The weekend of my birthday?" she suggested, waggling her eyebrows at him suggestively.

"You want us all in a motel room on your birthday? What, am I supposed to drug her and lock her in the bathroom while you break out the gimp mask?"

Adrienne lost her appetite when she heard Garrison's comment, so she set her food down, feeling queasy. "Right. Yeah, no," she muttered. But she knew he was just kidding, that of course he didn't mean anything by it, so she struggled to swallow her discomfort and move past it. She didn't actually know how to compromise on the Tandy/Garrison situation, however, wanting to spend time with both her sort-of-ward and with her boyfriend and not knowing how to do that while keeping both of them happy. For a fleeting moment she regretted the transformation she'd undertaken to let people into her life, wanting to go back to being the person who just thought about herself and had nobody else to think about making happy. So rather than struggling with the question, she just let it drop and changed the subject, turning back to the television. "Hey, how come you changed the channel on me? I thought we were watching the movie!"

"Hey, don't do that. I know shutdown face when I see it." He still had a tendency to forget that Adrienne had issues, especially when it came to interacting with others, and they tended to spill out unexpectedly. "I'll get a second room and we can juggle who's where and when while we're there, eh? Adri, we're dating. That means you and I work stuff out that bothers us, not bottle it up. Otherwise, we'll be like one of those couples of those terrible shows the girls like - what, the Hills or something?"

"And speaking of-" Kane picked up the remote, assuming he'd rolled on it accidentally, but 'Bringing Up Baby' was still playing, as Katherine Hepburn continued to lie badly to a befuddled Walter Catlett. "Um, did it switch back?"

Adrienne had forgotten about the television while Garrison spoke, and when she turned back to it the movie was back. "Yeah, it must have," she muttered, idly touching her temples where a headache had come and gone in a moment. But she wasn't really interested in the movie anymore, setting the plates of food aside and snuggling up to Garrison. "I definitely don't want to be one of those couples. Paparazzi are horrific; I'd have to take a makeup artist with me everywhere to avoid bad tabloid pics." But since the point he was trying to make was about communicating, she figured she should actually do some, beyond flippant comments. "Sorry. It's still so easy to do shutdown face," she admitted sheepishly. "I'm glad you know when I'm doing it and can call me on it, though," she smiled, kissing him on the cheek. "You have the patience of a saint, and I think you're wonderful for it."

"Well, you're lucky you're hot." Kane joked, earning a light swat. "Look, I know this whole situation with Tandy is tough. You're allowed to ask for help, or at the very least, understand that I'm willing to make arrangements so you can give her the kind of attention and support that you think she needs. But I can only do that if you talk to me about it, okay?"

Adrienne gave him a wan look. All of this stuff was still so confusing to her. "Okay," she nodded. "I guess I've just been worried that you won't want to make arrangements for Tandy," she admitted. "I mean, she's not your responsibility, and she's proving to be a bit more of a responsibility for me than I'd originally anticipated. And this wasn't what you signed up for when you decided to give me a second chance, y'know? And I know you've never given me any reason to suspect that you're unhappy with the Tandy-guardianship situation," she added quickly, even though she'd taken his comment about the motel room as unhappiness on his part just now, "but that doesn't mean I don't feel a little bad about the fact there's this other person in my life you have to share space with now. But yeah," she smiled, "it's good to hear you're willing to make those arrangements. Clearly, I should have brought up these feelings before, so I could have cut them off before they got so entrenched."

"Now you're finally starting to make sense." He took her cup of coffee and placed it on the side table. "And now that's solved, we seem ready to celebrate." Kane pulled her close.

"You'd find a reason for this type of celebration no matter what, wouldn't you?" Adrienne smirked, kissing him. "Oh look, breakfast. Time for sex. Oh look, lunch. This calls for sex..."

"You say this like it is somehow a negative thing..."